Electronic systems often require signals to stay within a certain range to function properly. For example, many analog components operate linearly within a given range of voltages, but begin to behave in a non-linear fashion when voltages become too large often leading to saturation of those components. As a result, peak reduction is used in these systems to maintain linearity.
Common methods of limiting input signals include dynamic range compression where an input signal is subjected to a predetermined input-output function, phase manipulation, which can be applied to certain types of signals such as speech, and automatic gain control. These solutions have either limitations or undesirable spectral effects.